I await back-peddling and clarifications before commenting on what appears to me an admission of failure.

While we are talking about failures, let me point a huge failure playing out in the Singapore civil service in the form of the fiasco called the “Standard Operating Environment”. There is no one in the civil service that has anything positive to say about the fiasco that they have to be living with for the next umpteen years. The amount of tax dollars wasted and continued to be wasted because of the closed, proprietary software chosen is appalling. We need to stop it. Now!

Mr Prime Minister, I made an offer to help set up a Singapore Open Institute that will propel the Singapore public sector rapidly forward with the adoption and use of open source software and make it innovative and forward thinking. The offer still has not been taken up by you or your office.

Let’s make rapid changes and changes for the better. I look forward to hearing from you at h dot pillay at ieee dot org.